Mystery Of The Forgotten Treasure

By Marbury Smith

Each weekday morning, good ole boys, either retired or employed part-time gather in restaurants far and wide for coffee and camaraderie. One crisp fall day in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, the conversation during one club's breakfast shifts from sports and motorcycles to sleuthing because the house of one of its members has been ransacked. What begins as a little investigation by the six men intent on quickly solving a simple break-in leads to other crimes, all interconnected. The men are unaware of the danger they are courting until one of the suspects is murdered. The pace accelerates when clues lead to a yacht suspected of harboring the mastermind criminal. A simple surveillance turns into a shooting chase into the Gulf of Mexico. The FBI, Interpol, the US Coast Guard, and US Customs join the pursuit for an international ring of thieves. And finnally, the Breakfast Crew unearths the solution of the Mystery of the Forgotten Treasure.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Marbury Smith
• Release date: Mar 2, 2013
• ISBN: 9780615551296

Book preview

Mystery of the Forgotten Treasure

Marbury Smith

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Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 Thomas Smith.

First Edition 2011

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, events, or locales portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, or events is entirely coincidental. Tuscaloosa landmarks are pertinent to the story line.

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ISBN: 978-0-615-55129-6

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Table of Contents

Dedication

The Medallion

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

About the Author

Acknowledgments

Dedication

This adventure is dedicated to all the breakfast crews that meet every day all over America. Each morning these groups meet at the local deli, one of the fast food restaurants, or a neighborhood mom and pop restaurant. They discuss the local, state, national, and international topics that are part of the daily news and develop solutions for all the problems. Most of the breakfast crew are retired; some still work part time. They all realize that life is truly an adventure.

The Medallion

Participants in the Mystery Of the Forgotten Treasure

Mark Ryder: Retired FAA Operation Inspector and Breakfast Crew

Taylor Graham: Store owner and Breakfast Crew

Ira Micco: Breakfast Crew

Steve Wayne: Breakfast Crew

Wade Elmore: Breakfast Crew

Clinton Patrick: Breakfast Crew

Henry Webb: Breakfast Crew

Dr. Alexander Huffman: University Professor

Brannon Scott: Student working on his Ph D

Randolph Muller: Black Market dealer and Owner of Muller estates

Captain John Henry: Police Chief, Princeton New Jersey

Donald Helms: Property owner were bell is located

Dr. Ronald Warner: Tuscaloosa Historical Preservation Society

Dr. Wallace Jones: University Archeologist

Sara Bryant: Supervisor for insurance investigative unit

Jack Robertson: FBI attached to Homeland Security

Richard Morison: Lead FBI Investigator

Eddie Rosser: Police Detective

Rusty Ryder: Older son of Mark Ryder

Glenn Ryder: Younger son of Mark Ryder

Blake Wells: A friend of Rusty Ryder; lives Dog River (Riviere du Chien) in Mobile Alabama

Chapter 1

The fire engines screamed with their sirens and flashing lights as they twisted through the evening traffic along 15th Street, one of the main thoroughfares in Tuscaloosa. The sun had completed its day's work and had settled in the west about an hour earlier. The big red trucks careened into the parking lot of the medium-sized strip mall where smoke was peeling out through seams in the windows and around the doorways. Two police patrol cars were already on the scene, and the officers were efficiently directing traffic and setting up a crowd control barrier. Some of the firemen began uncurling their hoses while others were identifying the main cubicle where the hot spot was located. Still others were setting up bright spotlights that were connected to the generators aboard their fire engines. The spotlights would illuminate the area just like a Friday night football stadium.

It took about two hours to contain the fire and remove most of the smoke. Inspector Powell, who was a friend of mine from high school, was searching the remainder of the building to assure that the fire was out and that no other hot spots existed. The structure was about 450 feet long by 120 feet deep and housed six businesses: an appliance parts store, a chiropractor's office, a tax investment company, a music store, and a nick-nack store. The last cubicle was being used by the parts store to keep extra inventory.

One of the owners of the complex had arrived just after the fire engines. Taylor Graham, a heavy-set, sixty- year-old man, was trying to assure that no one had been injured and was giving the fire marshal any information he requested concerning the building, its occupants, and the types of stores that were there.

The other owner of the strip mall, Ross Graham, Taylor's brother, was thought to be out of town on a business trip. The brothers also owned and operated the parts store. The fire inspector had almost completed his on the scene investigation when he discovered that the office to the parts store had been ransacked with papers scattered over the floor, cabinets emptied, pictures torn from the wall. Taylor Graham was an avid clock collector and had eleven clocks of all types and sizes in his office, although he did not keep any tall grandfather clocks. All eleven clocks had been smashed on the floor and the gears and mechanisms had been strewn around. The damage was in an area where there was no fire. In fact there had been very little smoke in that part of the complex.

According to Inspector Powell, the fire had been limited to the area where the parts store kept extra inventory. The main area of the parts store that had been ransacked was at the opposite end of the long building.

It was one of those special spring nights in this modest Southern town. The weather was great and required only a light jacket. I had arrived just prior to the fire engines. The authorities had contacted me because they could not locate Taylor. I was one of Taylor Graham's closest friends and was on some sort of list to contact if the authorities could not locate Taylor or his brother in an emergency. As I walked up, Taylor did not acknowledge me. However, he knew I was there. After everything had settled down and the firemen were winding up their hoses, he was talking to the police detective, whom I knew by sight only.

Taylor motioned for me to come over. I assumed he just wanted somebody familiar to be close to him. He introduced me to Detective Eddie Rosser and they continued their conversation. It seemed that the fire and the vandalizing of the parts office were two totally separate incidents. The fire was definitely arson and very amateurish. The fire marshal had no problem in deciding this after he found a couple of old burned rags and an empty can of cleaning fluid. The police officers, first on the scene, had actually been cruising through the parking lot on routine patrol looking for anything out of the normal and had stopped to talk from their separate patrol cars. They had been there about fifteen minutes when they noticed the smoke and turned in the fire alarm. The back of the building had been cut with some kind of saw allowing entry into the parts store, while the parts storage area, at the other end of the building where the fire was located, had been cut into by a large pair of metal shears found lying on the ground.

The detective sounded somewhat baffled and asked Taylor to sort through the mess in his office after the crime scene crew had left and try to identify what was missing. Taylor said he would and asked him about hiring an off-duty policeman to secure the building for the rest of the night. Detective Rosser said he would take care of it and left saying he would come by the next afternoon and discuss it with him. The detective nodded at me and left.

Taylor just stood there not saying anything, a blank look on his face. I, too, just stood there silent. At this point, what was there to say?

Eventually Taylor said, Let's get a Coke, knowing I had never learned to drink coffee.

Off we went to an open burger place right across the street, where we could see the entire complex through the windows. Taylor pulled out his cell phone and called his insurance company and advised them of what had happened. The insurance agent said he would have somebody there in an hour to shore up the building. Taylor explained that Detective Rosser had already secured an off-duty police officer to guard the building the rest of the night.

After some time of just staring out of the window, Taylor said, This just doesn't make any sense. Why did someone cut a hole in the wall in two places, start a fire in one place, and vandalize another?

I don't know about the fire, I said, but it doesn't look like your office was vandalized. It appears more like someone was looking for something. When the crime crew lets you have your office back, look for something small that is missing. It would seem that whatever they were looking for would have to fit inside one of the clocks they destroyed.

Taylor replied, There was nothing in the clocks.

I said, I know. They didn't find anything, or they would have stopped tearing stuff apart.

Let me stop here and explain who I am. My name is Mark Ryder. I'm a retired pilot, a principal operations inspector, for the Federal Aviation Administration. Before I went to work for the FAA, I was under contract to the Alabama Power Company and flew 4,300 miles of power lines a month. These cross-country transmission lines carried lots of voltage; the smallest had 44,000 volts while the largest had 500,000. In addition, as a flight instructor, I would teach a few of the military ROTC flight students when the company ran short of instructors. I also flew a few charter flights. When I was twenty-seven years old, I had 5,200 hours flight time; that's a lot of flight time as a pilot in command for someone that age, but in those days I kept good records. Now I keep enough records to show that I'm current for anything I fly. I usually tell people that I'm a retired airplane driver; however, being an FAA Operations Inspector is not altogether about just flying airplanes. I was involved in numerous aircraft accident investigations and was responsible for enforcing the Federal Aviation Safety Regulations. For those of you who are legal minded, it's the Code of Federal Regulation Part 49, or it was when I retired some fifteen years ago. I am not a private eye or a bounty hunter. I never wanted to be either. However, from time